There are many who write down every evening what they have done during
the day; some who keep a record of the plays they have seen, the books
they have read, the cigars they have smoked--but is there one man in a
hundred, nay, in a thousand, who, at the end of the year, or even once
in a lifetime, draws up a list of the people he has known? I don't mean
his intimate friends, of course--the few whom he sees, or with whom he
corresponds; but the multitude of people met in the past, and perhaps
never to be encountered again, of whom the recollection returns from
time to time at longer and longer intervals as the years go by, until
at length it wholly fades away. Which of us has not forgotten a hundred
once familiar names, lost all trace of a hundred once familiar lives?
And yet to my mind this forgetfulness implies such a loss in the way of
experience, that if I could live my life over again I should devote at
least half an hour a day to the tedious task of recording the names and
histories of the people I met, however uninteresting they might appear.
What strange and complex annals I should possess had I kept such a list
of my earliest school-friends, supplementing it as time went on by any
news of them that I could continue to obtain, and keeping track, as
best I might, of the principal changes in their lives! As it is, of the
two or three hundred lads that I knew there are but twenty or thirty
whom I can recall, or with whose occupations and whereabouts I am
acquainted--of the others I know absolutely nothing. For a few years I
kept them all vividly in mind; three hundred rosy faces smiled at me,
three hundred schoolboy jackets testified more or less distinctly to
the paternal standing, from the velvet coat of the mayor's son to the
floury roundabout of the baker's offspring; I still heard all their
different voices; I saw where each one sat in school; I recalled their
words, their attitudes, their gestures. Gradually all the faces melted
into a rosy blur, the jackets into a uniform neutral tint; the gestures
were blent in a vague ripple of movement, and at last a thick mist
enveloped all and the vision disappeared.
It grieves me that it should be so, and many a time I long to burst
through the mist and evoke the hidden vision. But, alas! my comrades
are all scattered; and were I to try to seek them out, one by one, how
many devious twists and turns I should have to make, and to what
strange places my search would lead me! From a sacristy I should pass
to barracks, from barracks to a laboratory, thence to a lawyer's
office; from the lawyer's office to a prison, from the prison to a
theatre, from the theatre, alas! to a cemetery, and thence, perhaps, to
a merchant vessel lying in some American or Eastern port. Who knows
what adventures, what misfortunes, what domestic tragedies, what
transformations in appearance, in habits, in life, would be found to
have befallen that mere handful of humanity, within that short space of
time!
And yet those are not the friends that I most long to see again.
Indeed, if we analyze that sense of mournful yearning which makes us
turn back to childhood, we shall be surprised to find how faint is the
longing for our old comrades, nay, we may even discover that no such
sentiment exists in us. And why should it, after all? We were often
together, we were merry, we sought each other out, we desired each
other's companionship; but there was no interchange between us of
anything that draws together, that binds closer, that leaves its mark
upon the soul. Our friendships were unmade as lightly as they were
made. What we wanted was somebody to echo our laughter, to climb trees
with us, and return the ball well; and as the pluckiest, liveliest, and
most active boys were best fitted to meet these requirements, it was
upon them that our choice usually fell. But did we feel kindly towards
the weaklings? Did it ever occur to us, when a comrade looked sad, to
ask: What ails you? or, if he answered that somebody lay dead at home,
did we have any tears for his sorrow? Ah, we were not real friends!
It has probably happened to many of you to come across a companion of
your primary-school days, after the lapse of fifteen years or so. You
receive a letter in an unfamiliar hand, you glance at the signature,
and you shout out: "What? Is HE alive?" On with your hat and off you
rush to the hotel. Your heart thumps as you run, and you race upstairs
to his door in hot haste, laughing, rejoicing, and thinking to yourself
that you wouldn't have missed those few minutes for any amount of
money. Well, those few minutes are the best. You bounce into the room,
and find yourself embracing a strange man in whom, as you look at him
more closely, you can just discern some faint resemblance to the lad
you used to know; one of you exclaims, "How are you, old man?" the
other plunges breathlessly into some old school reminiscence; and
then... that's all.
You begin to say to yourself: "Who IS this strange man? what has he
been doing all these years? what has been going on in his soul? is he
good or bad, a believer or a sceptic? I have nothing in common with
him, I don't know the man! He must be observed and studied first--how
can I call him a friend?"
What you think of him, he thinks of you, and conversation languishes.
With your first words you may have discovered that you and he have
followed opposite paths in life; he betrays his democratic tendencies,
you, your monarchical leanings; you try him on literature, he
retaliates with the culture of silk-worms. Before telling him that you
are married, you take the precaution to ask if he has a wife; he
answers, "What do you take me for?" and you take leave with a touch of
the finger-tips and a smile that has died at its birth.
The friends of infancy! Dear indeed above all others when the years of
boyhood have been spent with them; mere phantoms otherwise! And
childhood itself! I have never been able to understand why people long
to return to it. Why mourn for years without toil, without suffering,
without intelligent belief, without those outbursts of fierce and
bitter sorrow that purify the soul and uplift the brow in a splendid
renewal of hope and courage? Better a thousand times to suffer, to
toil, to fight and weep, than to let life exhale itself in a ceaseless
irresponsible gayety, causeless, objectless, and imperturbable! Better
to stand bleeding on the breach than to lie dreaming among the flowers.